pigsteak wrote:I outweigh my wife by 50 pounds..she can stand anywhere she wants and it is a soft catch.
people are missing the real point here in how to give a soft catch. it is not so much about where you stand as it is about timing your reaction to the fall. on those steep falls, if they have started a straight down fall, and then the belayer sits back hard, it creates a slingshot effect that swings the climber at increasing speed into the wall. learning to get over the tendency to sit back, stand your ground, or whatever is tough but can be learned. the big thing is that right at the moment the climber is about to hit the end of the rope, this is not the time to be a brick wall. learn to cushion the fall for them.
Yep, I've got about 50 lbs on Lena too, and I have to be pretty darn catlike to give her a perfectly soft catch. I even do little things like take a leak before belaying her, take off my chalkbag, jacket, any unnecessary gear on my harness... 5lbs can be a big difference, and I think 165-170 is right at the threshhold for climbers at 120lbs or under... & it helps to belay her with a figure 8 & use especially dynamic ropes, as some are way softer than others. By the same token, if I fall on her, it is typically pretty huge & there is NO getting back on route by boinking--we leave a backpack with 20-25lbs. nearby so she can put it on and enable me to boink up.
If a bigger belayer doesn't time their hop perfectly (ie. they are coming down from their jump when they should be going up), the results can be pretty grim for a lighter climber. This was what caused those injuries on Spank and the Madness Cave--mistimed jumping and/or sitting back on the rope like a bag of cement. These were belayers who were instructed to "jump" during the fall and screwed it up--it really is a split-second difference between a nice soft catch and the hardest, most jarring slam into the rock possible when the climber is significantly lighter than the belayer. In fact, I think it's better NOT to instruct a relatively green belayer to jump during a fall ("during the load" would be the more accurate way to put), because if they screw it up and jump too early (before feeling the tug of the rope), a real hazard has been created. On the other hand, if they just stand there and don't jump, the catch will be hard but not dangerous. Jumping too early is a major unrecognized hazard IMO and it is quite easy for a heavier belayer to screw this up, and if they are standing anywhere but underneath the first bolt the physics are pretty hopeless.
And yes, we're talking about steep sport climbing here before somebody feels the need to qualify "but not on vertical routes or ledgy trad, right? Right?!" Where you stand is important when the belayer significantly outweighs the climber, but good reactions, judgment and adaptation to changing situations are more important. Unfortunately there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to this, just good instincts and experience.
